Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals have secured a majority government, clinching two of three byelections being held Monday night. Nearly a year after last April’s minority government win and on the heels of courting five opposition MPs to cross the floor, Carney’s grip on power just got tighter. In the Liberals’ first win of the night in University-Rosedale, Ont., candidate...
One year after rescuing Canada’s Liberal Party from electoral disaster, Mark Carney has strengthened his hold on power. The rookie prime minister clinched a razor-thin majority in special elections on Monday night, bolstered by five defections during the past five months from progressive and conservative parties to the Liberals. Results are still being counted, but Liberal candidate Danielle Martin claimed...
Conservative member of Parliament Billy Morin says the Liberals are trying to get him to cross the floor, but he has no intention of leaving the Conservative caucus. Speaking on a hot mic before a press conference on Parliament Hill, Morin asked journalists unprompted: “Do you want to run a story on floor crossing?” When questioned if he would be...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is welcoming Hungary's shift toward supporting Ukraine and liberal democracy as voters ended 16 years of far-right government. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban conceded defeat on Sunday, after running a government in Budapest that increasingly attacked media freedom, courts and universities. Orban was widely seen as the main impediment to European Union support for Ukraine against...
Poilievre said that it's up to British conservatives to figure out their own issues.
The Liberals hold a 13-point lead, and Mr Carney is the preferred prime minister. The economic picture is darkening fast: concern over jobs and the economy has risen nearly five points in a month, inflation worry is up and anxieties about Trump and America has dropped to the third most important national issue.
The latest Weekly Federal Tracker rom Liaison Strategies shows the Liberal Party maintaining a steady 10-percentage-point lead over the Conservatives, bolstered by high approval ratings for Prime Minister Mark Carney and significant leads in key regions like Ontario and the Prairies. If a federal election were held today the Liberals would receive 43% of the vote, followed by the Conservatives...
The federal Liberals are now the strongest party in the country, as was amply on display at their convention in Montreal over the weekend. It’s not their politics that have put them there, as was also clear in Montreal. It’s the absence of politics — the ability to shape-shift into a force that can’t be pinned down as right or...
VICTORIA -- The prospect of an early election in British Columbia is receding after the government announced that legislation to suspend parts of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act will no longer be a confidence vote.
MONTREAL -- Quebec premier-designate Christine Frechette has a bit more than five months to make her party more appealing to Quebecers before the provincial elections.
There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about the province’s decision to take over the City of Toronto’s role in the agreement governing Billy Bishop Airport and to acquire the city-owned lands at the airport. Some have asked why the province would take such a step. The answer is that Billy Bishop is a critical piece of...
Pierre Poilievre has flunked the most basic test for any leader, advancing his party's prospects to portray it as a government-in-waiting. But it will be waiting a long time under the status quo. Admittedly, part of the reason that the CPC has set up permanent residence in the political wilderness has to do with the current prime minister.
Amid the floor-crossing, Liberals may have needed to hear a salute to their party. At a moment of celebration and on the eve of potentially even greater triumph, Prime Minister Mark Carney offered a brief note of caution. "Just over a year ago, in the midst of a blizzard ... we started down the road to make the best country...
The buzz at the Liberal convention over the weekend was all about floor-crossers. On Friday morning, there was a rumour circulating that Prime Minister Mark Carney would show up unexpectedly to unveil another, freshly recruited Conservative to follow the surprise defection of Marilyn Gladu. Later, there was scuttlebutt that Mr. Carney might show up on Saturday with two or three.
As Quebecers prepare for an election in early October, the dramatis personae of what will be a very political summer — from the beaches of Gaspésie to the Festival Western de Ste-Tite — was filled-in with another major party leader on Sunday. Christine Fréchette, 56, a former minister in the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government of outgoing premier François Legault...
By the time this column appears in print, the Liberal party will have wrapped up its convention in Montreal.
This was supposed to be a column about the trio of by-elections in a few days that would have delivered the Liberals to the balmy climes of MajorityLand – if everything went exactly right for them, that is. But then, Marilyn Gladu decided to make Wednesday the most exciting day of the week. The Sarnia, Ont. MP was elected four...
Supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada had much to celebrate in Montreal this weekend. For one thing, the party is on the verge of commanding another majority in the House of Commons. Sixteen months ago that seemed implausible, bordering on inconceivable. For another, it continues to exist as a significant presence in Canadian politics. Fifteen years ago that seemed...
Prime Minister Mark Carney plans to follow in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s footsteps and strip the ability of his party’s members across the country to weigh-in on his leadership should he fail to win the next election. It’s the latest demonstration of Carney’s grip on the Liberal party, which was on full display Friday during the Grits’ national convention in...
As Prime Minister Mark Carney accepts a fifth floor-crosser into the Liberal caucus from across the political spectrum, how big is too big of a tent? The Political Panel weighs in on how floor-crossers are shaking up the dynamics on Parliament Hill.
Politicians who worry that the newest Conservative convert to Mark Carney’s Liberals will hold right-wing policy views that are incompatible with the government’s social policy positions have not yet recognized what’s going on. They rightly perceive that Sarnia Member of Parliament Marilyn Gladu has held views on abortion, same-sex marriage, vaccination mandates and other policies that are counter to what...
It’s like déjà vu all over again. Yet another Conservative MP, uncomfortable with the direction of the party or doubtful about its electoral prospects, has decamped to the Liberals. The fourth floor crossing from the CPC in six months — with more MPs reportedly considering the move.
It seems there’s a cross-party freakout over the fact that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu has crossed the floor of the Commons to join the Carney caucus. Conservatives are outraged that Gladu would turn her back on the party under whose banner she was elected no fewer than four times.
With a speed that lightning metaphors would insult, your National Post’s comment section has already published a couple of items about Wednesday’s shock defection to the Liberals of Sarnia MP Marilyn Gladu, who had been re-elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative less than a year ago. These pieces establish that Gladu was one of the most radical...
A podcast can show you a side of someone but a floor-crossing tells you something deeper about the mood inside a caucus. When Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre sat down with Joe Rogan for a long, wide-ranging interview, even critics had to admit he came across differently. The usual edge wasn’t there. No constant jabs at Prime Minister Mark Carney, even...
After 12 months, five floor crossings and one Liberal convention this weekend in Montreal, Mark Carney is going to get his majority government. If the Liberals win the three byelections scheduled for next week, and they should, they’ll have 174 seats, enough to pass legislation without relying on the Speaker of the House of Commons or support from another party...
By now, interested readers will be able to find all sorts of reminders that, before she crossed the figurative floor to the Liberals on Wednesday, Marilyn Gladu had a reputation in Ottawa as an eccentric at best, and a loose cannon at worst. Her Wikipedia entry features expressions like “hydroxychloroquine” and “conversion therapy.” Scanning reactions to the Sarnia MP’s defection...
My jaw is on the floor. Marilyn Gladu just crossed the aisle to the Liberals, and I am struggling to find the structural logic in a move this cold. As a veteran strategist and former National Campaign Manager, I’ve been involved with backroom politics for so long it’s fair to say the majority of my adult life has been lived...
With one warm floor-crossing welcome, Prime Minister Mark Carney challenged Wednesday what it means to be a Liberal, gave his primary opponent a big wake-up call, and planted the seeds for simmering caucus discontent. A day before Liberals gather in Montreal for their biennial convention — Carney’s first as leader — the prime minister embraced four-term Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong Conservative MP Marilyn...
Sarnia Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu backed the trucker blockade in Ottawa, along with a bill that would force floor-crossers to quit and run again. On Wednesday, however, she crossed the floor to become a newly-minted Liberal for Prime Minister Mark Carney — the fifth of her kind. There’s no quit in this politician. A less obvious Liberal than Gladu you...
During his brief and ill-fated time as leader of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff invited Canadians to join him inside the "big red tent." This appeal obviously did not work out for Ignatieff. But perhaps he was merely ahead of his time. Fifteen years after Ignatieff's time as Liberal leader came to a sudden end, Mark Carney is exploring just...
The news that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu is crossing the floor to join the Liberal caucus, effectively guaranteeing Prime Minister Mark Carney a parliamentary majority, has not been hailed universally by her constituents. “She thinks she knows better than her voters?” said one resident of Sarnia–Lambton–Bkejwanong on social media. “What is the flipping point? You wonder why people get radicalized...
Of all the floor-crossers who’ve inched Prime Minister Mark Carney closer to a majority in the past six months, Marilyn Gladu won the award Wednesday for generating the most spit-takes. Just in time to attend the Liberal Party National Convention in Montreal this weekend, Gladu — a very Conservative member of Parliament since 2015 — announced that she had defected...
OTTAWA -- The NDP is expected to introduce a motion on Wednesday calling on the government to ban a practice known as surveillance pricing that New Democrats say is unfair to consumers.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberals could soon form a slim majority in the House of Commons if the party is able to make gains in three by-elections being held on Monday. The outcome of the races, two in the Toronto-area and one near Montreal, could solidify his hold on power, staving off a federal election until as late as...
Former senior Liberal cabinet ministers say they have "deep concern" about the federal government's decision not to pass legislation aiming to close what they consider a regulatory gap in arms exports. Former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy and former justice minister and ambassador to the United Nations Allan Rock recently wrote a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand...
As she faced reporters for the first time after announcing herself as a Liberal, Marilyn Gladu seemed to hint that, as an MP on the government side of the House, her riding of Sarnia-Lambton-Bkejwanong would get access to government funding that it was not getting so long as she was a Conservative MP.
Voters in two Ontario ridings and one in Quebec will head to the polls on Monday for a slate of crucial federal byelections that could hand the Liberals a majority government — cementing their hold on power for the next few years. The Liberals need to win just one of those races to secure a razor-thin majority government. Because the...
Prime Minister Mark Carney government’s much-touted high-speed rail project, with an estimated cost of $60–$90 billion, carries significant political risk, according to political insiders, who say that instead of prioritizing this large-scale mega project, billed as one of Carney’s “nation-building” projects, the government should focus on intra-city transit initiatives that are more immediately relevant to Canadians. “When you sit down...
Quebec will soon have a new premier after former cabinet minister Christine Frechette was named leader of the governing Coalition Avenir Quebec on Sunday. She is to be sworn in before the Quebec legislature resumes early next month, but a date has not yet been set. Frechette defeated Bernard Drainville in the race to replace Francois Legault, who announced in...
The Liberals may be widely expected to walk away form Monday's three byelections with a clear majority, but the pressure is still on for them to fight for the hotly contested Terrebonne riding. Sunday marked the final day of campaigning before the parties rev up their get-out-the-vote efforts, and party organizers say it's all hands on deck. The Liberals have...
Record voter turnout delivered election result with global repercussions. Hungarian voters on Sunday ousted long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power, rejecting the authoritarian policies and global far-right movement that he embodied in favour of a pro-European challenger in a bombshell election result with global repercussions. Election victor Péter Magyar, a former Orbán loyalist who campaigned against...
Former Toronto mayor John Tory is backing Doly Begum, the former NDP MPP who recently defected to join the federal Liberals, in Monday’s Scarborough Southwest byelection. Tory, an independent who was once closely affiliated with the Progressive Conservatives, joined Begum on the campaign trail in Scarborough on Saturday morning.
Grits need to win just one of three races on Monday to secure a razor-thin majority. As the Liberals gear up for three federal byelections on Monday that could deliver them a majority government, House leader Steven MacKinnon says the government will "continue that impulse of working across party lines" even if it's not required to co-operate to pass legislation...
Our latest Spark Insights polling (Sample 4026, nationwide, online, April 4-8) finds the Liberals (46%) well ahead of the Conservatives (32%) buttressed by a 19 point lead in BC, a 17 point lead in Ontario, and 20 points ahead of the BQ in Quebec. Underpinning this support is wide approval (65%) of the government’s performance. Liberal governments have historically faced...
In marathon meetings this weekend, sources say the two sides were deadlocked over Tehran's nuclear program and control of the strait.
Coalition Avenir Quebec members have named Christine Frechette as the new party leader. She will be sworn in as Quebec premier. "I am so happy and proud that you put your trust in me," she told party faithful at the CAQ convention. "Today we're moving on to a new step. You voted for a new kind of leadership, a new...
Just over half of Canadians want the federal Liberals to win enough seats in Monday’s byelections to give Prime Minister Mark Carney a majority government, new polling suggests. The Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found that 53 per cent of Canadians want the Liberals to form a majority, while 47 per cent are opposed to the idea.
Following the surprise floor-crossing of longtime Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu to the Liberal benches, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon won’t say whether there’s a red line on which defecting MPs the Liberals will or won’t bring into their caucus. On Wednesday Gladu became the fifth MP — and fourth Conservative — to cross the floor and join the Liberals in...
Prime Minister Mark Carney is on the precipice of a majority government, a milestone the Liberals haven’t reached in years. There are three federal by-elections taking place on Monday, and the Liberals only need to win one to reach the 172-seat threshold required to control the majority of seats in this 45th Parliament. So, how did Carney get here? What...
Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a call on Saturday for political unity and for Canadians to dispatch with "politics as usual" as the country confronts a crumbling international order it once benefited gainfully from. Carney made the remarks to Liberal party rank-and-file in a speech to rally the troops on the closing day of the party's national convention in Montreal...
Even though the first few days of the ads' planned six-figure broadcast schedule fall during a 'challenging time' for the party, the new campaign will help keep the Conservatives ‘on the front foot’ and on message, says Harneet Singh. The Conservative Party’s latest $1-million advertising campaign was crowded out at the starting gate by its most recent caucus defector and...
As many as eight more opposition MPs are being courted to cross the floor, three Liberal sources told The Globe and Mail. Conservative and NDP MPs are in the mix, the sources said, though it remains unclear if any will make the jump – or when. The sources are all veteran Liberal organizers, and two are directly involved in reaching...
The leadership race to replace outgoing Quebec Premier François Legault concludes Sunday, with results expected to be announced in the afternoon in Drummondville, Que. Either Christine Fréchette or Bernard Drainville will take charge of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) — and the province — until the next general election currently set for Oct. 5. Drainville, 62, has positioned himself as...
Peter Milobar will be without his longtime campaign manager during the final stretch of the race to become the new leader of the Conservative Party of B.C. amid controversy stemming from a 2024 website and mail-out. Milobar's campaign said in a statement released Saturday on social media that Mark Werner is "stepping back" from his role to "focus on his...
PM Carney says he's 'often the last to know' about floor-crossers joining his party. In the wake of another Conservative breaking ranks to join Prime Minister Mark Carney, Liberal MPs are sharing new details about how they successfully convinced the first floor-crosser — Nova Scotia MP Chris d'Entremont — to join their side. In an interview with CBC's The House...
Federal Liberals voted in favour of setting 16 as the age of majority for Canadians to be able to use social media accounts. Party grassroots passed a non-binding resolution Saturday morning for the restriction and to place the onus on social media companies to enforce it. Quebec MP Rachel Bendayan, who presented the idea to her caucus and championed it...
This has to be the worst of times for Donald Trump -- nothing is going right, and the US President looks increasingly unhinged on a daily basis. Even some of his base are abandoning him. With Chantal away, former Washington correspondent Keith Boag joins Bruce for some serious Trump talk. Plus, another Conservative crosses the floor, making a Liberal majority...
A nail-biting Quebec by-election that was supposed to make or break the Liberals’ hopes of a majority government now looks more like a test of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s popularity in a part of the country not given to displays of Canadian unity. The game has changed since Mr. Carney called the by-election in Terrebonne last month, after the Supreme...
Nearly three in five Canadians support the idea of Canada joining the European Union, a new poll suggests. A Nanos Research survey conducted for The Globe and Mail shows that 57 per cent of respondents would either support (28 per cent) or somewhat support (29 per cent) Canada becoming a full member of the EU. The results also show that...
As Prime Minister Mark Carney made the rounds on day two of his party’s Montreal convention, two types of Liberals kept trying to shake his hand. One, the lifetime Liberals, who’ve known every party leader for decades. The other, young Liberals, whose introduction to the party was through former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s progressive values.
Online Streaming Act requires large streamers contribute to Canadian media funds. When she was growing up in Australia, Carla de Jong remembers watching the iconic Canadian TV show Degrassi — which at the time was airing on Australia's public broadcaster. "I love the example of Degrassi, which is a wonderful Canadian series…. And it showed me as an Australian teenager...
PM Carney has said an age of majority for social media is under discussion. Liberal members will decide today whether they think the government should restrict young Canadians' access to social media platforms and artificial intelligence chatbots, as the national convention winds down in Montreal. Liberal grassroots will vote on 24 policy pitches Saturday, ranging from health-care system improvements to...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A majority of U.S. Catholic voters supported Donald Trump in his 2024 presidential victory. Yet across the broad Catholic political spectrum - even among conservative-leaning bishops - there is dismay over Trump's unprecedented verbal assault on the Pope Leo XIV, the first American to lead their church.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Paul Dans, a chief architect of Project 2025, has shuttered his Republican primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, in a contest set to test the loyalties of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement in this year's midterm election.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell's abrupt exit from the race for California governor left his rivals scrambling to lock down his former supporters in a crowded contest with no clear leader, injecting more turmoil into the campaign to lead the nation's most populous state.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The big election over the weekend was in a small European country nearly half a world away from Washington, but the defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has significant reverberations in the United States.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is welcoming Hungary's shift toward supporting Ukraine and liberal democracy as voters ended 16 years of far-right government. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban conceded defeat on Sunday, after running a government in Budapest that increasingly attacked media freedom, courts and universities. Orban was widely seen as the main impediment to European Union support for Ukraine against...
Former senior Liberal cabinet ministers say they have "deep concern" about the federal government's decision not to pass legislation aiming to close what they consider a regulatory gap in arms exports. Former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy and former justice minister and ambassador to the United Nations Allan Rock recently wrote a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand...
Record voter turnout delivered election result with global repercussions. Hungarian voters on Sunday ousted long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power, rejecting the authoritarian policies and global far-right movement that he embodied in favour of a pro-European challenger in a bombshell election result with global repercussions. Election victor Péter Magyar, a former Orbán loyalist who campaigned against...
In marathon meetings this weekend, sources say the two sides were deadlocked over Tehran's nuclear program and control of the strait.
Canada is condemning Israel for striking Lebanon hours after an apparent ceasefire was struck in the Middle East conflict and is calling on Hezbollah to disarm in favour of diplomatic solutions. Despite an 11th-hour ceasefire announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Israel attacked Beirut on Wednesday in a renewed effort to strike at the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group...
Free trade negotiations with the United States have always triggered acrimonious and deeply damaging debates in Canada and often exposed political miscalculations at the highest levels. During the 1911 federal election campaign, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, running on a free trade platform, was denounced in Quebec as a traitor to the French and in Ontario as a traitor to...
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office wants to bust up a monopoly. I think I’m the target. Let me explain. The Privy Council Office (PCO), home of the prime minister and cabinet, has been flooded with complaints about its failures to comply with the Access to Information Act.
Canadian troops may be only days away from deploying to the Middle East to aid the U.S.’s and Israel’s war on Iran. The latest indication is a joint statement expressing concern about Iran’s restriction of oil tankers through the narrow Strait of Hormuz signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO allies late in the week.
Canadians who have neglected to pay their taxes to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) have been coming forward in droves to take advantage of new amnesty rules.
It's a great question and it comes from one of our listeners for our regular Monday conversation with Dr Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. That and a lot more, including how the Pope has entered the discussion about Trump.
After a fourth Conservative MP crossed over last week, the Liberals are now only one seat shy of an official majority. And with two out of three byelections taking place today in safe Liberal ridings, it’s widely expected that Mark Carney and the Liberals will get their majority government after the results come in.
It’s not actually official that Canada’s defence budget meets NATO’s two per cent of GDP target, despite the press releases claiming so. Yes, spending has been going up, but what is it really meant for? This is Brian’s discussion this week with David Perry, president of the Global Affairs Institute, and Christian Leuprecht from the Royal Military College of Canada...
What do countries lose when they no longer have diplomats on the ground? Louise, Jeremy and Peter examine how the absence of embassies and diplomatic relations can distort judgment, weaken consular protection and leave governments relying on weaker intelligence, intermediaries and guesswork.
